I LOVE your idea and can't wait to do the same with my grand daughter who is 2 years old now.

I worked long hours while raising my three children alone and did a similar thing on much smaller scale with each of my three children - giving them each an hour or so alone with me each week. There things might be more activity than you would wish for but we have always loved the outdoors.

My son had few interests and was the most difficult for me to connect with. Things he LOVED: flying a kite, roller skating, miniture golf, video games, rafting down a little fork of a nearby river that took us a number of weeks to build the raft from trashed lumber(bad time of year for you and I don't know where you live in Washington), BBQ breakfast on a tiny grill in the wilderness park (bacon on toast with hot cereal and fruit brought in a thermas was fast and easy then we would go hiking. I know you could take easy snacks without the trouble of the grill but he LOVED to eat hot food in the wide open spaces and it just tasted better there.

Things he did not like but your grand son may: bicycle a along wetlands or beach or natural trail, walk thru a botanical garden, plant a tree (my carrotwood and palm trees were always dropping seedlings)in the countryside, scrapbooking, ceramics you mentioned, bought him a disposable camera and spent a day learning basis photography skills and taking pictures of family members, pets, friends, school or whatever he wished for a "My Life in 1974" (or whatever year it was), made a family tree collage from baby pictures of all the family members, built a bird house, bat house, visited the zoo, visited the farm that sells parrots, visited an ostrige farm, visited a llama farm, visited a turkey farm, had him write a story, and draw illistrations that I had bound into a book but now you can buy kits over Amazon.com for books you can have published and dishes they paint, send in and have made permanent. In fact, I have seen kits on Amazon.com to paint their own umberella, table lamp, cup, bird bath, bird feeder, bird house, etc. Also Home Depot or Lowes have kits for bird houses, bird feeders.

I don't know if ANY of these ideas can work for you, but good look and I am sure you will get some GREAT suggestions.

My girls LOVED to go for "high tea" where a friend of mine who owned a British tea house. (I was a nurse and massage/accupressurist and we would do trades). I do not know that your grandson would enjoy high tea. Also, the children LOVED to go to a really fancy restaurant (we could not afford to eat at) but on special occasions I would order each a Shirley Temple type of drink and we could overlook the harbor or bay to end a wonderful day. Oh, we use to drive to Disneyland and watch the grand finale fireworks in the Disneyland Hotel sipping a juice or milk. I don't know if you have anything in your area that you can get a "piece of".

I'm thinking maybe a trip to the zoo, bowling alley, or museum. A train ride would be fun. Do you have an indoor mall with bumper cars, a carosel or even those little ponies or cars outside stores that take quarters. Gumball machine jewelry or tattos might be a fine addtion to whatever trip. It might be fun to try on hats or wigs.

What a great idea. As a parent of two boys, I think the best gift a grandparent can give is their time -- what a wonderful, thoughtful gift.

I also like to spend as much time with my grands as possible.....
I have some suggestions for before Xmas........
I take my grandchildren for rides at night to see the Xmas lights..luckily it gets dark early so we can go before they are ready to go to sleep. My grandson, almost 6, loves it more than my granddaughter, now 4, cuz she likes to go to bed early.....but she enjoys it too! And I also spend a day before Xmas to do crafts with them to make gifts for their parents! We make things from gifts to decorations and beyond......whatever they want to do! And every year since my kids were little we have cookie decorating day the weekend before Xmas...I bake the cookies the day before, and we invte anyone & everyone, their friends, my friends, whatever, and we all deocrate till we get tired of it, and then we put them on plates and give them to older people in the neighborhood or anyone who is alone, and they take them to their daycare or teachers too!

I always give my neices and nephews craft kits. They love to make stuff and can't wait to show me what they made on my next visit.

Here is two gifts I did last year as family craft kits (you or mom & dad can do with them). The first was each family member got a plate kit. You draw a picture or whatever on the provided paper and send it to the company that prints it on to a melmaine plate. The other was a family kit to tye-dye T-Shirts (great thing for the family to wear to an amusement park or family reunion).

Boys love Build A bear,but they are rather expensive.

I happened on a "winner" idea once when we were guests at a Christmas Eve dinner where I knew there would be a few youngsters. I bought each child a tiny 2-foot artificial tree and a card of 24 wooden ornaments. They loved this! Two of the little girls spent all of the before-dinner time decorating and re-decorating their trees, and helped the younger ones with their trees. Not only were they entertained, they weren't underfoot while the adults visited and got dinner on the table. I was surprised to discover one of the little trees in one girl's bedroom five years later -- in the middle of summer. She glowed, telling me how she remembered that happy time with her cousins. (I think each tree + ornaments came to about $5 at Target.)

I made my granddaughters scarfs and they loved them. Included was a scarf for their dolls. Also made them lip balm, soaps and lip gloss. It went over well. Love the gift certificate idea with the album, that's a thought for next year. I had cross stitched them each a sampler called granddaughter. Instead of buttons I used charms (initial, cross, heart) from realitives that had passed away. I included a card explaining them all. Felt it was something they could always keep no matter how old.

I find personalized christmas ornaments are fairly inexpensive and make great gifts for just about any occasion.

Ornaments With Love out of Maryland has a pretty good selection of personalized ornaments: http://www.ornamentswithlove.com

thanks for all the great ideas - but I failed to mention that only the 12 year old lives here, the others are all way out of state.